


gravity breaking our kneecaps just to show us the sky

by Anemoi



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Circa 2013, M/M, MASSIVE THROWBACK but only emotionally, Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 06:49:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15858417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: When February comes to an end he knows it’ll be over soon.





	gravity breaking our kneecaps just to show us the sky

**Author's Note:**

> ive no idea abt this fic and.. i still dont after writing it really... i blame Michael Owen's [interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YFEwTa_DjU)
> 
> [VISUAL](https://i2-prod.liverpoolecho.co.uk/incoming/article9452258.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/JS66035303.jpg) [ AIDS](https://www.gettyimages.in/detail/news-photo/robbie-fowler-michael-owen-and-steve-mcmanaman-of-liverpool-news-photo/1273630#sep-1998-robbie-fowler-michael-owen-and-steve-mcmanaman-of-liverpool-picture-id1273630)
> 
> plus massive, massive hugs to my fav manc [Rach](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold), with whom.. i share.. mickey owen...and who held my paw thru all this nonsense. LOVE U WACHEL FEED ME BIKK

 

 

 

 

 

 

> "His name changed when touched  
>  by gravity. Gravity breaking  
>  our kneecaps just to show us  
>  the sky. We kept saying Yes—  
>  even with all those birds.  
>  Who would believe us  
>  now? My voice cracking  
>  like bones inside the radio.  
>  Silly me. I thought love was real  
>  & the body imaginary."

 

_\- from "Eurydice" by Ocean Vuong_

 

 

 

 

When February comes to an end he knows it’ll be over soon. Sooner then he’d even allowed himself to believe, but it happens in the middle of a match. He’s on the bench, frozen even in his coat, and his legs hurt more than he’d ever remembered them hurting, even more than the quick lightning strike of pain when his hamstring snapped. This was a dull pain settling like a fog over everything, a buzzing chorus that continued incessantly in the background. Everything becoming clear and undeniable at last. Watching the running figures on the field in front of him, Michael thinks, _this is it._

 

-

Surprisingly when he got the offer from BT, Steve was the first one to call.

“Heard you got the job!” Steve says, cheerful.

“Macca? Yeah,” Michael says, nonplussed. He hadn’t even had Steve’s number saved, but his voice was still unmistakable. “I think it’ll be good.”

“Radio?” Steve says, over something loud, as though he’s walking on the streets with a crowd around him. “With Darren?”

“Yeah,” Michael says again. “And Mark Halsey, apparently.”

Steve laughs, then abruptly says, “The ref? That’d be interesting. Keep me updated. We might run into each other sometime.”

“Alright,” Michael says. It left him feeling odd, because it’s been a long time since anyone from Liverpool called him, except Carra.

 

-

He’s only three weeks moved into a new house when the pipes burst. Michael’s in the shower when it happens and writes off the loud crank as his ears filling with water, but when he steps downstairs, toweling his hair dry, the entire kitchen was filling with water an inch deep. The sink’s a fountain spectacular enough to rival certain public parks.

He spends a precious moment swearing, mind a blank, before scrambling to toss his towel over it. It takes even more time to find his phone and then finding the maintenance number, all the while splashing in an increasingly flooded house.

It takes so long for them to get there that he’s sitting on the stairs, pant legs rolled up, given up on trying to plug the leak with hand towels.

“Two weeks!” Greg the maintenance man says, cheerfully waving over his mates armed with buckets, and Michael’s dumbfounded.

 

 

 

He blames that earlier brief conversation with Steve on why he called him first.

“He sent you a letter for annual checkup?” Steve says, vaguely sympathetic. “That’s terrible. Should’ve called, or sommat. No one checks their mail these days.”

“Right,” Michael says. “Now it’s two weeks before everything gets fixed and I’ve _just_ moved in. Should I get the Marriott or the Hilton, you think?”

“What?” Steve says, now indignant. “You’re staying with me!”

“Oh.” It had somehow never occurred to him. He looks at the watermark on his jeans, drying in the weak September light.

“I’ll pick you up in an hour. Anything left to pack? Or you need a shopping trip too?” Steve laughs. Michael rolls his eyes, and says _See you later_ , still confused at how it’d come to this.

 

-

 

Living with Steve was a little too easy- Steve’s place was huge, decorated haphazardly with weird mix of styles, and Michael gets put on the second floor in one of the five guestrooms with his own bathroom.

“Hope you’ll settle in!” Steve says, cheerful, before going off immediately to “check on the horses” with Robbie. Michael almost asks to come, since horses was one of the only things he’s actually interested in- but it seemed weird and out of place. He wasn’t sure he was even welcome to stay, or if he’d just accidentally guilted Steve into saving him.

They see surprisingly little of each other, even though they drive to work together most mornings, Steve dashing off to the studios while Michael makes his way through the maze of rooms to the radio section, stumbling his way through the routine till it gains some semblance of familiarity. The football is the only thing that remained the same.

He watches it with Steve some days, putting it on in the background while Steve makes something for dinner. Steve’s strangely good at cooking, efficient pies and pasta while Michael can only roast a chicken edibly.

 

 

 

One day he wakes up and it’s been more than a month since he’s played professional football. The thought just drops out of nowhere, ends up like a weight dropped in the middle of his stomach and it’s suddenly hard to breathe. All he can do is stare up at the ceiling and wonder if that was it, this is how it will always feel. Everyone talks about it- this post retirement crash, when your body’s given out but your mind’s still running. And yet-

Truth be told, he’s had too much practice with it to still feel angry and misused. But it’s the same old anger, really, except now mixed in with a relief that felt more like shame. Relief now that he no longer has to go on the bench and watch people run while his legs ached.

He hears a cough after a while and sits up. Steve’s standing in the doorway, holding a plate of toast. He looked awkward, like he hadn’t expected Michael to be in bed staring at the ceiling with wide open eyes, not blinking.

Michael swings his legs over the edge of the bed, then just sits there, staring down at Steve’s carpet. It’s a light blue color, soft under his feet.

“I uh, I heard your alarm go off a while back,” Steve says, clearing his throat. Michael felt him come over and the mattress dip when Steve sits down next to him.

Michael takes a piece of toast and nods at Steve, who reaches out and brushes the side of his face with the back of his hand, half joking. The gesture surprises Michael into a huff of laughter, and when he looks up Steve’s grinning, clear eyed in the grey light from the windows

“Let’s go to the gee-gee’s,” Steve announces, bouncing up. He leaves Michael staring after him, still a little dazed. 

-

It’s small local race, all amateurs, nothing like the Royal Ascot. Steve still insists on dressing up enough to wear a garish yellow bowler, and Michael shuffles in beside him, trying not to seem embarrassed to be seen in his company and generally failing. It’s a typical greyish overcast day, the horses stamping restively behind their starting gates, mud churning up on the race course.

The size of the occasion never really bothers Michael, even though he enjoyed the pomp and ceremony of the bigger races, holding champagne and posing for pictures with people. It’s easy to be draw in, as soon as the starting bell goes and the horse rush out in a storm of flicking tails and thundering hooves.

In the middle of it all, hanging over the barriers in the front and voice hoarse from shouting, he glances over at Steve. Steve’s yelling, all crooked mouth and ungelled hair floppy on either sides of his face. He’s also lost his hideous hat. Michael laughs, and they stay the full twelve races for the entire day.

It does make him feel better, he realises, watching the horses streak past like wind made tangible. He doesn’t think much about why, and he doesn’t have to, with Steve flinging a companionable arm around him when they leave.

  
  


-

  


They’re watching an old replay on television, last season’s FA cup final. Arsenal against Hull. Steve’s tossing cashews into the air and catching them in his mouth, lazy,

Michael stares at the football for long enough for the dead feeling from the morning to come back. The body is a stupid, fickle thing. As long as he’s not running he can’t feel the pain and then, well, then he just thinks, _Could I have kept going?_ The figures on the TV blur, mockingly. Ramsey scores on screen, an easy, perfect goal.

Steve reaches out one long arm and prods him in the shoulder. “Mickey?”

“You know I don’t even remember”, he says, turning to Steve. “I don’t even remember what it was like to play.” He swallows back without being terrified.  
  
“Do you want a slideshow, like?” Steve snickers, shoving him gently, “Technicolor special, Michael Owen’s greatest goals? I can find it on youtube, there’s got to be some.”

“No,” Michael says, batting him off with a hand. “It’s not the same. I want to just- _remember._ ”

Steve quietens, at that. Their eyes meet, for a second, too honest to be casual. He wonders if Steve would make a joke now, pull out of anything resembling emotion. Steve’s not the sort to say anything that couldn’t be, somehow, turned into an offhand comment, something safe and funny and easy.

But he lies back down on the sofa with a cushion behind his head, closing his eyes thoughtfully. Michael watches him breathe in deep, then exhale, long fingers interlaced on his chest.

“You were like-“, he starts, considering. “Lightning hitting the field.” His face softens, and he’s not mocking now, a rare, private sort of Steve.

“So fast. You were in all the right places. When I got the ball,” he says, still with his eyes closed likes he’s imagining it replaying behind his eyelids. “I would just look for you. Because I knew it would find you. And I knew it would go in.”

Michael finds he couldn’t breathe right, somehow. It keeps getting stuck in his chest, and he’s almost panicking at this. Steve sits up, puts an arm around him, holds him close and tucks him under his chin just like when they were twenty and at top of the world.

He shuts his eyes- Steve still smells vaguely the same. A different brand of cologne, faint, something minty, and underneath- just Steve, and Michael feels that he shouldn’t recognize it. But he does.

“Just me?” he says, proud of the way his voice was only a little shaky. “What about Robbie, eh.”

Steve laughs, chin bobbing against his head, and Michael can feel it on his cheek, reverberating in his chest. “Right, him. Only when he was injured, then.”

Michael laughs, startled into it. 

When he pulls back, Steve puts both hands around his face. He’s still got lovely fingers, long and slim, his thumbs brushing Michael’s cheek.

He looks at Steve, meets his eyes.

“Like what you see?” Steve says, and kisses him.

 

-

 

Here’s a numbered list of things he knows about Steve:

  1.   At one time, he was the greatest midfielder playing for Liverpool. He carried the team that was built around him, the smooth axis from which it sprung forth to attack
  2.   He often faltered in front of the goal, however infinitesimally, though it didn’t take him much effort to disarm defenders and get there.
  3.   He makes jokes about other people and himself, laughs hardest at the self deprecating ones, stubbornly won’t tell anyone when he’s hurting, even though it showed through in the locker room. To Michael, this had been always obvious, but he thinks maybe not to everyone.



 

And lastly: He still keeps his hair long, 20 years later. And Michael knows why, too. He’s never cut his hair shorter than the nape of his neck because Robbie had said, years ago, offhand, his nose scrunched up like a button with glee, that _Macca would look exactly like a matchstick with short hair._

 

-

 

He still kissed back, because Steve was all those things and also his friend, because Steve started it, because Michael was terrible at making decisions overall, because when it comes down to it, he has to admit it, years and years ago watching Steve tug the armband onto his arm, still nonchalant and easy, taking the defence apart with his knife sharp passes- he has to admit, he’d loved Steve then, and this wasn’t really guesswork at all. It was just simple. A fact.

-

 

“I didn’t know that was a thing,” Michael says when they break apart. Steve raises an eyebrow, mouth quirking like _which part._

“I meant, I didn’t know- you and Robbie- I mean,” Michael hurries on, even though he had no clue what he was saying. If Steve gets a word in here it’d be a rude joke, and Michael’s not that used to all this, starting to think the whole debauchery business in the nineties was a bit more accurate than he’d previously thought. “I just never realised-”

Steve laughs, but it’s kind around the edges. “Don’t worry, Mickey Owen.” He flicks Michael’s nose and gets up, stretching and yawning with his eyes screwed shut. “Growler’s probably started a betting pool on how long it’d take.”

“What?” Michael says, but Steve just waves at him and saunters out of the living room.

 

-

 

He half expects it to change things between them- but it doesn’t. Steve’s still humming and rifling through the kitchen cabinets in the morning, sunlight picking out the grey bits on his temples right before his ears.

“Coffee?” he says when he sees Michael walk in, stifling a yawn. “Tea? Oh _right_ , you don’t drink any.”

He pours orange juice before Michael can voice an opinion and slides it over to him, flips the omelettes in the pan expertly and puts it on two plates.

“Macca,” Michael starts. Steve sits down and hands him a fork.

“Mickey,” Steve says, his face serious but his eyes too bright, and Michael knows it’s the way he gets right before he makes a joke.

“I like omelettes,” Michael says inanely, before his brain could catch up. Steve laughs, then, reaches over and ruffles his hair, too quick for Michael to duck.

“I know,” he says.

-

They go golfing in the afternoon, with Robbie, who bears a somewhat smug air.  
  
“So how long _did_ it take,” he says, bumping Michael with his shoulder.

“What?” Michael says. It’s Steve’s turn and he’s squinting under a raised hand. The ball ends up over the lake but still on the slope, rolling back down to splash into the water. Steve groans theatrically and throws up his hands.

“You’re rubbish,” Robbie says cheerfully. Steve flicks his ears, murderous, and Robbie yelps, mostly because Steve’s height makes ear flicking particularly easy.

He watches them laughing together with arms around each other’s shoulders and feels- heart tugging- _something_ \- Robbie looks over at him and winks.

His swing doesn’t even make it across the lake.

 

-

They all go to the pub together later, ostensibly for old times sake although Michael thinks it's probably not that rare of an occurrence for Steve and Robbie - Michael has no idea what to expect, even at this stage in his life when he’s no longer so sheltered and insular. It turns out Steve and Robbie still go hard but not as hard as he seemed to imagine, and with a few drinks Michael can get rowdy as anybody.  Mostly they just cheered at the Liverpool replays on television and let people buy them pints until the world dissolved pleasantly into a haze, like a fizzy pill melting into his tongue.

He kept stealing looks at the two of them throughout, as though he could catch them out on something, right out there in public. They just- seemed like what they used to be- close. As though they had their own language, spoken in the silences between words rather than the words themselves, sometimes just Robbie’s hand on the back of Steve’s neck, unassuming.

Michael puts his mouth on the side of his glass, not sipping. Robbie looks over, catches his eye, and tilts his head a little.

“We should get back,” Steve says.

“Alright,” Michael says slowly, and when they file out of the crowded pub and spill onto the cobblestone street, unsteady and giggling, Robbie flings an arm around each of them, their breathes coming out in the barest white plumes in the suddenly chill autumn air.

 

-

They’re barely in Steve’s house when Robbie spins Steve around, heedless of Michael there, and kisses him square on the mouth. Steve doesn’t really shut up when he’s being kissed, still mumbling about locking the door and dropping his keys into someone’s cast off shoes.

They stumble up the stairs, still somehow upright, to Steve’s bedroom. For a bit, all they do is lie there, and Michael remembers hazily, all the hotel rooms they’ve stayed in for away games, everyone piled into one room to watch replays or play over pixelated video games. _  
_

Maybe if they’d been younger this wouldn’t have happened. He couldn’t really envision it- back then all he had thought for was playing, obsessed and single minded with it. He didn’t want to go out after training, didn’t want to mix with the lads, just stayed at home with more football on the television, blurry eyed and comforted.

He sits up, after a bit, the beer wearing off and something else settling in to his stomach, warm and unfamiliar. Steve’s staring at him, frowning a little like he does when he’s pretending to be serious, a laugh in the curve of his mouth. Robbie’s looking at them both, impatient and vaguely judgemental. Michael feels like he’s teetering on the brink of a fall, and every instinct is telling him to run away before it all turned out to be some grand prank from the best pranksters he’d ever known. Knowing Steve and Robbie, it’d have a name, _taking the mickey,_ or-

Robbie makes an disgruntled sound and puts a hand square in the middle of Michael’s chest. He pushes- Michael goes, flat on his back again and Steve’s laughing somewhere, high and delight but also strangely breathless.

Robbie’s hovering over him, blocking out the light. His eyes are still very green. He’s waiting, like they’ve already told the joke and now it’s Michael’s turn to get it, but Michael’s brain is like a wet fuse, the synapses refusing to fire.

It’s like muscle memory, or something. All he does is tilt his head and he’d be kissing Robbie.

So he does. Robbie laughs into his mouth, but he’s not pulling away, confident hand tugging down Michael’s shorts. Michael’s pulling him closer, and Steve says, somewhere too close, breathlessly laughing, _Oi leave me some room-_

 

 

 

 

-

  
  


He remembers: God was an 18 year old with green eyes.

 

 

-

He remembers: Chemistry class. The teacher sliding on some goggles and picking the strip of magnesium up gently with tongs, telling the class to look away, don’t look directly at the fire because it’ll damage your eyes.

Everyone obediently turned their heads, except him.

He couldn’t help it. It was mesmerizing. The magnesium burned like the center of a hot star, more brilliant than staring directly at the sun. He lasted a few seconds, then had to look away into the dark corners of the classroom, eyes watering, still seeing bright blurs. It burned for less than a minute, flaring and furious and too big for their tiny classroom.

When they turned the light back on, all that was left of it was a pile of ash, soft and grey.

 

  
-

He remembers: Leeds. Running until he wasn’t anymore, the ball rolling away from him in slow motion. He’d had an opening, Steve’s pass slotting neatly into the channel and he’d turned to run like he’d done a thousand times before. It’d come without warning; a thunderclap in clear skies.

When they stretchered him off he thinks, _Oh_. Over and over again, like all his thoughts were turning into a flock of birds, taking flight.

  


 

-

He remembers: United. The closest he felt anything sparking after leaving Liverpool was in Manchester. It sort of made sense, in a backwards kind of way. Two cities like inverses of each other. His last minute goal against City, everything wiped out in that hot furious joy. It wasn’t like a final or an England cap, but still, the nature of it. Something like redemption.

Nothing lasted, of course.

It’s like he wasn’t quite real to anyone anymore. A shade. A shadow, someone who’d walked from heaven to hell and then back again. In the locker room he was accepted eventually, but never included; in the stadium he was appreciated on occasion, but never loved.

Nothing lasted, but he still _wants,_ like a tired record spinning, trying to chase after something he’s lost too long ago but remembers all too clearly. At the end, there wasn’t anything left to do but accept it. Robbie got to go back; he didn’t. And so, all he’s left with: this disjointed truth, these aching legs, these wrinkles fanned out at the corner of his eyes, this hollow shining memory of running faster than the wind. 

That’s what growing old is, he supposed.

  


 

-

He wakes up in the middle of the night, Robbie’s arm thrown over his chest and snoring directly into his ear, Steve curled up on Robbie’s other side like an over large cat.

Thinks for a second, how none of this made any sense at all, but absurdly, glad that it had happened.

He supposed he was, overall, just glad that it happened. Everything.

 

 

 

 

  
-

“Do you talk to Stevie still,” he asks Robbie, the next morning.

“Obviously,” Robbie says, stopping mid type on his phone, eyebrows raised. “Why? Don’t you?”

“Not for a while,” Michael says, thinks _three years is a while_.

“I’ve got his number if you want it,” Robbie says, eyes drawn back to his phone. He pushes the bowl of cereal at Michael, not looking. “Milk’s in the fridge. Macca’s in the shower.”

Michael chuckles. He doesn’t get the number.

 

-

There’s a game on in the afternoon, Liverpool away at Villa Park, and Michael watches it in the studio, pixelated on big screens, three of them right next to each other like funhouse mirrors. It’s still dislocating to see Liverpool play, somehow, but he’s used to it by now, the feeling of not healing quite right. Sturridge scores; Michael cheers and no one gives him a second look.

He watches Stevie run into the huddle of players, grinning like he always did, every match the same. Always red. Tells himself, _let it go_. And he does.

 

-

Steve meets up with him outside after his studio show’s over, jingling his car keys and in high spirits from the Liverpool win. Michael grins at him, remember Robbie in the morning, dragging Steve’s head down for an impatient kiss.

They pass by a field on the way to the parking lot. It’s just one of those community fields, with hastily erected goalposts on either end, slightly askew, the nets looking fragile from constant use. There are no flood lights over it, the faded white lines barely lit with a triangle of orange streetlight.

Michael stops. Steve stops with him, his hands still stuck in his pockets like a teenager, and they both look at it for a bit, in silence. There’s no one around, the kids who use it probably home when the sun set. He thinks he remembers his mum saying, blurry past floating like a bubble in the back of his mind, _Be back before the streetlights come on_ , and the days he stubbornly stayed past that rule, couldn’t pull himself away from the net, the field, the ball.

“Reckon we can find a ball?” he says. Steve chuckles.

After some rummaging in the bushes they do find one, slightly deflated and much scuffed from use. Steve knocks it from his hands and runs with it, up the field, laughing at Michael’s torrent of swear words. He watches Steve run at first, still easy as the wind, thinking it lacked something without defenders on both sides of him, nipping at his heels but always thwarted.

Steve hits the ball at the tattered net and it goes comically wide. He swears and Michael’s doubled over from laughing, hands on his thighs.

“What! Like you can do better?” Steve yells. He scrambles out from the bushes behind the goal, lobs the ball at Michael.

 

He’s only twenty yards from the goal- he’d scored so many times from here it’s become a blur. He watches the ball roll toward him the last few feet, and feels like he’s floating above his own body, watching himself and Steve and this rectangular field of grass under the crisp dusky sky. Autumn turning to winter. In all the world he doesn’t think anyone cared about them at all, in this moment. Like he’s a kid again, still with everything left to prove. Funny how an open goal will always mean that.

 

He closes his eyes for a moment. Thinks- _Let me feel it just one more time. Let me feel it because I loved it so._

Then he opens his eyes; hits it right into the net.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! <3


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